{"id":36741,"date":"2023-01-28T23:41:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-29T04:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/?p=36741"},"modified":"2023-01-30T23:02:04","modified_gmt":"2023-01-31T04:02:04","slug":"how-pittsburgh-found-a-secret-climate-weapon-in-the-thrilling-world-of-municipal-budgeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/how-pittsburgh-found-a-secret-climate-weapon-in-the-thrilling-world-of-municipal-budgeting\/","title":{"rendered":"How Pittsburgh found a secret climate weapon in \u2018the thrilling world of municipal budgeting\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
>> Back to February 2023 Issue<\/a><\/div>\n
Illustration by Melanie Lambrick<\/em><\/h5>\n

This story is part of the Cities+Solutions<\/a> series, which chronicles surprising and inspiring climate initiatives in communities across the U.S. through stories of cities leading the way.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Governments the world over have made a lot of great-sounding climate commitments. In Pittsburgh, for example, an ambitious plan adopted in 2018 outlines objectives like 100 percent renewable energy in municipal facilities by 2030, a fossil-free fleet, and zero-waste operations. But setting goals is one thing. Implementing the programs and infrastructure needed to reach them is another \u2014 and that work costs money.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a large, ambitious agenda, but very little resources that went alongside it,\u201d<\/span><\/i> says Grant Ervin, Pittsburgh\u2019s former chief resilience officer who oversaw creation of the 2018 plan. <\/span>\u201cFollowing the completion of our resilience strategy and our climate action plans, we were asking the question: Where is the money to help implement these different initiatives that we had identified?\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Answering that was tricky for this midsize post-industrial city, which was designated as \u201cfinancially distressed\u201d from 2003 until early 2018. For Ervin, the challenge went beyond raising funds for new initiatives. He wanted to ensure the city\u2019s spending \u2014 all of its spending \u2014 aligned with its climate and equity promises. <\/span>\u201cIf we\u2019re going to address the climate challenge,\u201d he remembers thinking, \u201cwe\u2019re going to have to start to leverage our existing resources to do the things that we know we need to do.\u201d<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

For Steel City, that meant scrutinizing its entire spending plan through a climate lens\u00a0with the help of a method called\u00a0<\/span>priority-based budgeting<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The challenge: budgeting for a cause<\/b><\/p>\n

There are several ways an organization can slice its budget. One common approach is\u00a0<\/span>incremental budgeting<\/span><\/a>, wherein the previous year\u2019s budget provides the baseline for the next, with incremental adjustments. It\u2019s easy to imagine how that might lead to inefficiencies when line items get carried over year after year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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